by Kivi Leroux Miller in Nonprofitmarketingguide.com
You’ve probably been cautioned to avoid using social media as a fundraising tool and to focus instead on donor “engagement” – which will someday lead to fundraising opportunities. But when? What about all of those nonprofits using social media to raise money right now? Can you create a social media strategy that does both?
I think you can, and that’s what I’ll be talking about when I present a workshop called Social Media: Your On-Ramp to Future Fundraising at the annual conference for the North Carolina Center for Nonprofits on September 14.
Here are six different ways that I see social media and fundraising fitting together. You don’t have to do all of these, but picking one or two approaches and integrating them into your fundraising and social media strategies would be a good thing.
1. Project-specific, short-term campaigns that raise money now
By setting a specific goal (e.g. we need to raise $1500 to buy XYZ), and actively encouraging and empowering your biggest supporters to make it happen by a set deadline, you can raise money via social media using any of the ton of applications available to help you do this. You can also use this approach with “emergency” or “breaking news” fundraising — “this bad thing just happened, and here’s how you can help.”
2. Encouraging donations for celebrations (e.g. birthdays) to raise money in the future
Actively encourage your supporters to think about donating their birthdays or other celebrations where guests expect to give gifts. Causes Wish is set up exactly for this purpose. Charity: Water runs a wildly successful birthdays campaign. You can’t really predict when this will happen unless people commit to it well in advance, which is why you might want to think of it as “surprise” money.
3. Adding social to your in-person events to raise money now
If you are already doing event fundraising, you can add fundraising through social media to the event… Read More: http://www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/blog/2012/08/13/how-social-media-and-fundraising-fit-together/
